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BANDIT LANDS 13 – VEERAPPAN, THE JUNGLE CAT

November 24, 2025 By in BANDIT LANDS Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Veerappan stands with a gun in his jungle hideout in 1998. Photograph: AP

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‘It was a pukka operation’ said Jyoti Mirgi, the head of the operation Cocoon force that had been pursing ‘the Jungle Cat’ since 1993. ‘We ordered him to surrender but he refused’.

Mirgi was referring to the gun battle between police and Koose Muniswamy Veerappan (1952-2004), ‘India’s most wanted bandit’ with a price on his head of 20 million rupees, approximately US 500 000 dollars. In October 2004 an undercover police informer working in what was left of the ageing dacoit’s gang tipped off the authorities that the famed bandit would be leaving his forest sanctuary and travelling to hospital for eye treatment. The ambulance that was to take him to the hospital was a police vehicle, as were others in the area.

Over thirty policemen ambushed Veerappan and three of his gang. According to the official report, the bandit was killed on the spot after refusing to surrender. Police gave thumbs up signs as they posed by the famous corpse, which was then was taken to Dharampuri hospital, where crowds reportedly numbering up to 20 000 gathered to see the remains of ‘India’s Robin Hood’, as the press dubbed the notorious outlaw.

Born in 1952, Koose Muniswamy Veerappan had by the time of his death led the authorities on the traditional merry outlaw’s dance for four decades, smuggling sandalwood and ivory, allegedly committing well over a hundred murders and conducting the traditional business of the dacoit, kidnapping politicians and celebrities. In trouble with the law from an early age, he became more active and violent from the 1980s, once allegedly claiming that he cut his victims into small pieces and fed them to fish.

His nickname of ‘The Jungle Cat’ was a linguistic acknowledgement of his ability to elude and outfox the large numbers of police and troops sent against him in his jungle hideaways in the southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Karanataka and Kerala. He was said to have the sympathy of the poor, a fact that made it difficult for the authorities to obtain reliable information about his activities and whereabouts.

His most ambitious crime was kidnapping an Indian movie star, Rakjumar, and extorting a ransom from the state government before returning the star unharmed. But he also kidnapped a former politician in 2002, murdering him when his demands for money were refused. The bandit’s own description of how he killed one enemy gives an insight into the realities of bandit life and death:

“I wanted to see the blood gushing out of Srinivas’ chest. I took out my gun before he knew what was happening and shot him. I then cut off his head and began hacking off his hands. These were the very hands that wanted to turn machineguns on me. I kept his head as a souvenir.”

As is often the case with elusive bandits, there were suspicions that Veerappan had contacts with political and security officials and with the separatist Tamil Nadu Liberation Army, a faction of which vowed to take revenge for his death, according to the Khaleej Times.  His long dacoit career and the expensive operations eventually mounted to track him down suggest that he may have had more help than that available to him from his poor supporters, among whom he was said to distribute some of the proceeds of his many crimes and to shower the village children with sweets

Reporting Veerappan’s demise, the press lapsed immediately into the ambivalent rhetoric always associated with such figures. According to The Times, he was ‘an Indian Osama bin Laden and Robin Hood rolled into one: endlessly elusive, apparently uncatchable, evading troops sent to search for him even as he mocked them from his jungle lair.’ The Independent suggested India had a similar love-hate relationship with Veerappan as that of America with Billy the Kid, saying ‘if Veerappan was India’s blackest villain to some, to others he was a hero. He was able to survive in the jungle because villagers brought him and his men food, motivated by a mixture of respect and fear. The government forces sent to capture Veerappan were also said to have oppressed the local people: “At least, he does not hurt us,” they say.

The Indian newspapers were more condemnatory. The Telegraph of Calcutta quoted a former hostage saying he was glad that the outlaw was dead as he was a ‘cruel animal and vermin of the gutter’. The Indian Express referred to Veerappan’s ‘evil little empire’ and wondered how he was able ‘to mock the law for so long’. Elsewhere in India the press portrayed the dead bandit more in the manner of the outlaw hero with The New Indian Express quoting his aged mother to the effect that poverty had driven Veerappan to outlawry, though it also suggested that he commanded support more by fear than by sympathy.

Veerappan continued to be controversial and contradictory even in death. The director of the 1995 film of the outlaw’s life, boasting that Veerappan had approved the script, retitled it as Veerappan: The Original. He was reportedly responding to news that a rival director was preparing another film production to be titled Let’s Kill Veerappan. He became the subject of books and press articles and a long series on Indian television in 2007. Various legal actions ensued, keeping the bandit’s name in the public eye. It was also said that Veerappan stashed his loot somewhere in the jungle; people have been looking for it ever since.

In the facts and the fictions of Veerappan’s life and death echo those of other bandit heroes. He was forced into a life of crime by circumstances. He had the support and sympathy of his social group. He preyed mostly, if not totally perhaps, on the rich and powerful, he was betrayed and he died game. All these attributes, real or not, contributed to his being dubbed ‘the Indian Robin Hood’. In many ways, Veerappan’s life and legend are a link between the older style of bandit hero and more modern criminals who have understood the tradition and sought, in various ways to bend it to personal, ideological or commercial ends.

THE LADY ON THE SAND

June 8, 2025 By in ALLSORTS Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Rose Marie Pinon, later de Freycinet, Paris, 1812, aged 17. From an engraving of the original portrait in the possession of Baron Claude de Freycinet.

The slight figure boarding Louis de Freycinet’s Uranie hardly attracted a second glance. Ship’s boys as young as ten were not uncommon in the early nineteenth century. But this ‘boy’ was the beautiful wife of the captain dressed as a man. The year was 1817 and 23 year old Rose and 35 year-old Louis had just married. It was a truly romantic marriage for love. Rose was a commoner and de Freycinet an aristocrat. So helplessly in love were the couple that they could not bear to be separated and Louis broke every rule of the French navy to have her with him on what they knew would be a very long journey.

De Freycinet needed to modify his ship to cater for a female passenger and it was not long before word escaped ashore, causing great official consternation. But by then Uranie had sailed. The story delighted the French public and the de Freycinet’s became celebrities in their absence. The authorities decided to allow the romantic voyage to proceed. They were bound for the great south land via the Cape of Good Hope and Mauritius on a round-the-world voyage of scientific discovery. 

A year after leaving France the expedition anchored in Shark Bay to conduct scientific observations and map the area. But Rose’s husband also had some unfinished business in this part of the great south land. In 1802 de Freycinet had been with the Baudin expedition when they discovered the plate left by Willem de Vlamingh to mark his visit to the unknown land in 1697. De Freycinet and other officers wanted Baudin to remove the plate and take it back to France. But Baudin refused. De Freycinet swore that he would one day return and take the plate. His justification for doing this was ‘that such a rare plate might again be swallowed up by the sands, or else run the risk of being taken away and destroyed by some careless sailor, I felt that its correct place was in one of these great scientific depositories which offer to the historian such rich and precious documents. I planned, therefore, to place it in the collections of the Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres de L’Institut de France …’ [i], which he duly did. The plate immediately disappeared and was not seen again until 1940 when it was found in the basement of the Académie, reportedly in a box of old junk.

Rose kept a journal of her travels, recounting the sights she saw and the adventures she experienced with her husband. She also wrote many letters home. Her first view of New Holland, as the west coast of Australia was known at the time, did not impress her. She saw a ‘low and arid coast’ with ‘nothing in the sight to ease our minds, for we knew we would find no water in this miserable land…’ She would later go ashore with Louis and spend a few nights under canvas but‘That stay on land was not a pleasant one for me, the country being entirely devoid of trees and vegetation…’ In the cooler part of the day she collected shells and read in her tent.

Here Rose had her first contact with Indigenous people. She went ashore in a small boat but was unable to land because the water was too shallow. A couple of sailors had to carry the captain’s wife to the beach in all her finery. When they reached it a group of ten or so Aborigines approached, making strong signals for the intruders to return to their ship. ‘I was afraid, and would willingly have hidden myself’, she wrote home. The Aborigines retreated, leaving Rose, Louis and some officers to picnic on the beach beneath a canvas shade they had brought from the ship along with food. This they supplemented with some local oysters ‘far tastier than all those I had, sitting at a table in comfort, in Paris.’ 

What the people of the region might have made of this strange scene is not recorded. They may have thought that the strangers picnicking on their beach, Rose in her fashionable finery and the sailors in their colourful uniforms, did not present a very serious threat. In any case, just a few days later, friendly contact with the locals was established when they exchanged some of their weapons in return for tin and glass trinkets. Not likely to have been a fair exchange, setting the tone for much that was to come.

The French sailed north to Timor, then to the Moluccas, the Carolines, the Marianas and the Sandwich islands. In November 1819 they arrived in the growing colony at Port Jackson. Here the de Freycinet’s were welcomed enthusiastically by almost everyone. The Governor sent a military band to play them along the river to meet him at his Parramatta residence. There were endless parties and the French were provided with a house and facilities to pursue their scientific work. But on their first night in the house they were robbed of their silver service, table linen, the servants’ clothing and other items. Rose wrote home: ‘You know the purpose of this colony and what sort of people are to be found here in plenty; you will therefore not be astonished at this misdeed: might one not say it is roguery’s classic shore.’

Rose departed on the Uranie on Christmas morning. Aboard were two merino rams, adding to the black swans and emus they had already collected on their journey. Also aboard was a convict stowaway suffering the effects of too much Christmas cheer. He was handed over to the pilot but when they got out to sea another ten escapees were found. They joined the crew and one lady on board as they set a course for the Falkland Islands in search of an abandoned French settlement. 

Here the Uranie was wrecked, though the expeditioners managed to save their notes and around half of their samples. They eventually made it back to France where Louis was court martialled for losing his ship. He was cleared of the charge and then feted for his scientific achievements. Rose and Louis were a celebrated couple until Rose died of cholera in 1832. Louis died in 1841. The de Vlamingh plate was gifted to Australia in 1947. [ii]

[i] De Freycinet, Voyage Historique, Vol. I, 449.

[ii]  Marc Serge Rivière (trans & ed), A Woman of Courage: The Journal of Rose de Freycinet on her voyage around the world 1817-1820, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 1996, pp. 51-52.

THE ORGY THAT WASN’T

March 31, 2025 By in Human transportation, MYTHS AND THEIR MAKING Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

The women convicts of the First Fleet’s Lady Penrhyn went ashore at Sydney Cove on February 6, 1788. Most had seven or fourteen year terms and there were a few ‘lifers’ among them. The surgeon aboard the former slave ship that had brought them to the ends of the earth, Arthur Bowes Smyth, wrote ‘The Men Convicts got to them very soon after they landed, & it is beyond my abilities to give a just discription [sic] of the Scene of Debauchery & Riot that ensued during the night.’ According to subsequent writers, a wild orgy of rum, sex, storm and lightening followed, a fitting act for the foundation of a colony of convicts.

Popular as this story has become, in one version or another, historians have found little evidence of it ever happening. Bowes Smyth was nowhere near the scene of the alleged orgy, he was on the Lady Penrhyn quite a long way out in the harbour. None of the other keen diarists of the First Fleet, such as officers Watkin Tench or Ralph Clark seem to have noticed the orgy either. They certainly did not mention it in their accounts, an unlikely omission, especially for Ralph Clark who believed women convicts were all ‘damned whores.’

Why Bowes Smyth believed that ‘Debauchery & Riot’ occurred as soon as the women set foot in New South Wales is worth considering. He was certainly glad to see the women leave the ship: ‘we had the long wish’d for pleasure of seeing the last of them’, he wrote. The Lady Penrhyn’s voyage from England had been tedious and troubled with illness, lack of food and indiscipline. Many of the women were prostitutes and suffered from venereal disease. Although attempts were made to keep men and women separate, cohabitation quickly became commonplace. In April 1787, a month or so before they set sail for Botany Bay, five women were chained up for having relations with crewmen. There is no record of the sailors being punished.

During the voyage seventy year-old Elizabeth Beckford died of ‘dropsy’, or oedema, her bloated corpse buried at sea. She was not the last. Jane Parkinson died as they sailed from Cape Town to New Holland, as Australia was often known. Off Van Diemen’s Land the lumbering transport was lashed by a storm so fierce that the women fell to their knees praying for deliverance. Short of food once again, the Lady Penrhyn finally made Botany bay in late January 1788, only to discover that Arthur Phillip had decided the place was unsuitable for settlement. He had departed for Port Jackson.

By the time the Lady Penrhyn finally anchored in the great body of water that would become known as Sydney Harbour, the 101 women and more than 70 male crew and Marines had been cooped up on the thirty by eight metre vessel, in some cases for over a year. The women were flogged, chained, punished with thumb screws and had their heads shaved bare. Bowes Smyth wrote in his journal:

‘I believe I may venture to say there was never a more abandon’d set of wretches collected in one place…The greater part of them are so totally abandoned & callous’d to all sense of shame & even common decency that it frequently becomes indispensably necessary to inflict Corporal punishment upon them…’[i]

The doctor was clearly not well disposed towards his female charges. When he finally did ‘see the last of them’ he was predisposed to assume that they would behave in what he considered their typically debauched manner. Bowes Smyth was a product of his time and circumstances, as were all those who arrived on the First and subsequent fleets. 

The double standard that masqueraded as respectability and punished only women for acts that involved a male partner continued in the colony. Four of the convict women of the Lady Penrhyn became the de facto partners of officers and the Judge Advocate. Esther Abrahams and Lieutenant George Johnston began what would become a lifelong relationship during the voyage. They did not marry for another quarter of a century. 

Bowes Smyth also recorded an incident when one of the sailors was caught in the women’s tents. His hands were tied and he was publically drummed out of camp to the tune of ‘The Rogue’s March’, a ceremony used for dishonorable discharge from the army and usually followed by a flogging.

These more domestic relationships and official attempts to maintain propriety are not the stuff of myth. They lie forgotten in history while the more salacious story lives on. Historians have been trying to scotch the orgy myth ever since one of their own mistakenly set the yarn spinning in 1963. Manning Clark wrote of it though soon withdrew the assertion after a more careful look at the available evidence. But it was too late. The lewd rumour neatly captured popular views of early colonial society and the image of degraded convicts that had grown up over the generations. ‘The orgy that wasn’t’ gathered further currency from a procession of later writers and television shows repeating and embellishing the alleged scene.[ii] A yarn of ribald abandonment still resonates with a common view of the founding of Australia. No matter how often and convincingly historians demolish the myth, many still prefer to believe it.

From Great Convict Stories https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/9781760527488

[i] Arthur Bowes Smyth (Smythe), ‘A Journal of a Voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales and China. 22 March 1787–12 August 1789’. Mitchell Library.

[ii] See Grace Karskens, ‘The Myth of Sydney’s Foundational Orgy’, 2011, at the Dictionary of Sydneyhttp://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/the_myth_of_sydneys_foundational_orgy, accessed August 2016.

THE AGE OF CON

February 3, 2025 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
A Confidence Trick by J.M. Staniforth, 1898

As the story goes, Detective Chief Inspector Harry (Henry) Mann of the Western Australian police was wined and dined at London’s swanky Cafe Monaco in the early years of the twentieth century. His genial hosts were from a group of Australian con men with records longer than the arms of everyone at the table. The cafe was their London hangout and distribution centre for the proceeds of crime. Cop and crims were obviously well known to each other and this strange moment says a lot about the relationship between the police and the Down Under dupers who dominated Britain’s confidence games for decades.

In the years directly before the Great War of 1914–18, right through to the end of World War II in 1945, there were more Australian con men on British police registers than those of any other nationality—by a long shot.[i] They were recognised as highly skilled exponents of their nefarious schemes and were very successful. When caught, many had what amounted to small fortunes in their bank accounts and stuffed into the upholstery of their expensive furniture and cars—and they were just the stashes the police found. No self-respecting trickster would be without a secret hidey-hole or two for the inevitable emergencies. Bags of cash were essential to set up the bigger cons and to fund the lavish lifestyles needed to impress rich marks.

And there were plenty of them. Especially after World War I, Britain, Europe and the United States were awash with money flowing through newly opened international financial channels and connections. Business deals and schemes were being rolled out around the world in oil, minerals and a hundred other lucrative enterprises. A lot of people made a lot of money—and often spent it lavishly and ostentatiously. Perfect pigeons for gangs like London’s Hanley Mob, among others working the same rackets.

Sometimes the wealthy individuals suckered in were themselves con men of a kind, wheeling and dealing in the white-collar areas of finance and investment. But they were rarely found out and, if they were, could usually buy their way out of trouble. Eventually, their activities would play a part in the great stock market crash of 1929 and the deep depression that followed. But, for now, it was not only an era of excess and indulgence, it was also the golden age of the con.

The fix was in.

Just how and why Australians became the main exponents of the con in Britain, and sometimes Europe, is a mystery. Operators like Bludger Bill Warren, Dictionary Harry (Harry Harrison) and Dave the Liar (David John Lewis) excelled in new and clever versions of classic cons. These included the infallible betting system (and its variant known as ‘the brass’), ‘the pay-off’ (and an adaptation known as ‘the rag’), and other scams large and small also perfected by the cons from Oz. In one celebrated operation, Bludger Bill and some accomplices took down the immensely wealthy English shipping magnate, Sir Walter Cockerline, for more than £20,000—just under $2 million—in 1923.

At the time for—let’s say—professional reasons, Bill was sojourning on the continent. He’d fleeced a businessman in Portugal of £15,000 and found it necessary to fade away, turning up on the French Riviera. Here, the normally foul-mouthed Bill with his strong Australian accent became the owner of a South African diamond mine or three. Employing his practised skills, Bill checked into the same expensive hotel as Sir Walter, and soon made a good friend of him. Only a day or two later, Bill introduced Sir Walter to an acquaintance who was, quite coincidentally, a guest at the same hotel. The acquaintance was an American oil king. 

After getting to know each other a little more, the convivial trio visited Monte Carlo for some wagering at the tables. As they refreshed themselves with a coffee, the oil king noticed a man he described as ‘the biggest bookmaker in the United States’. The bookmaker, whose betting limit was said to be ‘the blue sky’, was invited to the table and was soon a member of the affable group. 

It wasn’t long before the conversation was about betting on the gee-gees. Bill and the oil king placed big bets through the bookmaker and invited Sir Walter to join the fun. By day’s end, the bookmaker was pleased to tell the informal syndicate that they had netted £170,000 in winnings. 

It was time for the sting.

When settlement of the bets was due, Bill, very annoyed, informed Sir Walter that the bookmaker’s club through which he had laid their bets would only pay up when the punters proved they could show they were men of substance. ‘But’, said Bill, flashing a large wad of cash, ‘I’ll put up the “cover”’, as it was called. Being gentlemen, of course, the others couldn’t allow Bill to pony up the full amount of their joint obligation so they each wrote personal cheques for £25,000. 

Sir Walter then had to return to England before the group’s winnings were drawn. Soon after he arrived, he received a wire from France. Bill was embarrassed, naturally, but he’d had a spot of bad luck and was temporarily short of £12,000 of his share of the cover. Would Sir Walter possibly be so good as to advance him that sum until the winnings were available? Completely conned, Sir Walter obligingly wired the money to Bill and never heard from the diamond magnate again.

Until the French police caught up with Bill and his wife in Paris. They had fled there in a newly purchased luxury car after another mark had complained to the authorities. When the police raided the con man’s apartment they found stashes of bank notes in various European currencies, as well as share certificates and a lot of diamonds being worn by Bill’s wife. The expensive car was also full of loot.

One of the advantages of being a confidence trickster was that the risk of being caught was very low compared with most other forms of crime. Victims were often too embarrassed to admit they had been so easily fooled and often reluctant to report their loss to police. Even when they did, it was often difficult for prosecutors to make winnable cases because the nature of the transactions could often be represented as commercial business deals, gambling wins and losses, or gifts. There was rarely a paper trail documenting what happened, whatever that had been. In the case of Bludger Bill, the French court in which he was brought to book was at first reluctant to admit the case at all, as the prosecution failed to establish Bill’s true identity, even with help from Scotland Yard. The wily fraudster also maintained that his arrangement with Sir Walter had been a commercial matter.[ii]

This and the odd loophole in the laws of the various countries in which the Aussies operated meant that they often escaped conviction. The only recourse available was to prosecute them for fraud under civil law, a course taken by several victims who had the financial resources required. No that this made much difference to their finances. Bill and his accomplices were tried and convicted, spending some more years in a French prison. It’s unlikely any of their victims ever saw their money again.

Confidence tricksters are a special type of criminal. They depend on their wits, powers of persuasion, and the gullibility and greed of their ‘marks’, or victims. They have been fleecing the foolish forever and will never stop. Their wiles and ploys are complex and clever, as well as despicable. As one writer on the subject put it in 1935: ‘in its higher reaches the art of the confidence trick is a subtle science demanding more than common qualities of nerve and brain—or if you like a front of brass and a fertile cunning. Steal a fiver and you get thrust into gaol; steal a million and they build you a monument. That is the creed of the master of craft.’[iii]

Con artists are generally considered to be elite criminals who avoid violence in favour of elaborately researched and constructed frauds usually perpetrated against those who most people think are too wealthy for their own good. That includes the averagely paid police officers tasked with tracking con artists down. Chief Inspector Mann was in London to visit colleagues at Scotland Yard and swap intelligence on the roots and scams of the con men well known to them all. They were few enough in number to be recognised by police who often had an ambivalent relationship with them. The hunters and the hunted shared a bond of common interest in crime, even if from different perspectives. The diners at Cafe Monaco were all aware of their roles that night but suspended hostilities for a few convivial hours, each no doubt hoping to learn something to his advantage from the event. 

Confidence tricksters also need to keep up with changing times. The Australians were at the forefront of the new, twentieth-century breed of operators. A few gentlemen thieves and suave manipulators of an earlier age were still around but had largely been succeeded by a brasher, often more proletarian crim, better suited to the world of self-made millionaires, often with colonial connections. The same skills of deceit and manipulation were used to rob the rich and had evolved, from the lowliest short con to the most sophisticated long con, into finely staged performances in which the star was also the mark.

The con men, and some women, weren’t exactly benefiting the poor but they did not batten onto everyday mugs. Not worth the trouble, of course. Since that time, scams and cons have increasingly targeted you and me through the internet and mobile phones. We’re not filthy rich but there are an awful lot more of us and it’s all so easy to play the Nigerian money scam, for example: simply the modern form of an ancient con known as ‘the Spanish prisoner’. These tawdry rorts employ the tricks of deception, diversion and persuasion used by the earlier fraudsters, but they are crude echoes of a much cleverer and more artistic form of criminality. The old-time operators weren’t known as ‘con artists’ for no reason.

[i] W. Meier, Property Crime in London, 1850–Present, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, UK, 2011.

[ii] ‘Warren’s arrest’, The Evening Star (Dunedin), 10 July 1923, p. 4. According to this report, Bill netted £23,000 from Sir Walter. Dilnot, below, also says £23,000. 

[iii] George Dilnot, Getting Rich Quick: An outline of swindles old and new with some account of the manners and customs of confidence men, Geoffrey Bles, London, 1935.

THE FLYING DUTCHMAN DOWN UNDER

October 30, 2024 By in MYSTERIES, supernatural Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The Flying Dutchman by Albert Pinkham Ryder c. 1887 (Smithsonian American Art Museum)

The legend is first recorded in 1790, but it was already old in sailors’ lore. Undoubtedly the most famous nautical yarn of all, the enigmatic tale of the Flying Dutchman is known around the world. And the spectral sailing ship has been sighted in many oceans, including in Australian waters.

At first, the story was a short yarn about a distressed Dutch ship seeking safe harbour at the Cape of Good Hope during a raging storm. A pilot to guide the vessel to safety was not avail­able and the ship was lost with all her crew. Ever since then, the glowing apparition has been seen during stormy weather. Sighting the Flying Dutchman was considered to be an omen of doom.

The Cape of Good Hope was a regular port of call for ships on the Australian run from Europe and although the legend was initially a Dutch story and largely restricted to sailors, it flowed into the broader community in the late eighteenth century. One of the earliest accounts is that of the ‘Prince of Pickpockets’, George Barrington, on his way to serve a sentence in Australia in 1795. Barrington’s version of the story is a little more elaborate than the basic legend (though he was a notori­ous confidence trickster with a silver tongue): 

. . . it seems that some years since a Dutch man-of-war was lost off the Cape, and every soul on board perished; her consort weathered the gale, and arrived soon after at the Cape. Having refitted, and returning to Europe, they were assailed by a violent tempest nearly in the same latitude. In the night watch some of the people saw, or imagined they saw, a vessel standing for them under a press of sail, as though she would run them down: one in particular affirmed it was the ship that had foundered in the former gale, and that it must certainly be her, or the apparition of her; but on its clearing up, the object, a dark thick cloud, disappeared. Nothing could do away the idea of this phenomenon on the minds of the sailors; and, on their relating the circumstances when they arrived in port, the story spread like wild-fire, and the supposed phantom was called the Flying Dutchman. 

Barrington did not see the apparition, but he met a sailor who did. About 2 a.m. he was woken by the boatswain ‘with evident signs of terror and dismay in his countenance’ and begging for a drink of spirits. The man claimed to be ‘damnably scarified’ because he had just seen: 

the Flying Dutchman coming right down upon us, with everything set—I know ’twas she—I cou’d see all her lower-deck ports up, and the lights fore and aft, as if cleared for action. Now as how, d’ye see, I am sure no mortal ship could bear her low-deck ports up and not founder in this here weather. Why, the sea runs mountains high. It must certainly be the ghost of that there Dutchman, that foun­dered in this latitude, and which, I have heard say, always appears in this here quarter, in hard gales of wind.

After a few deep draughts, the boatswain ‘grew a little composed’, admitting that he was prone to seeing ghosts. Barrington went on deck with him to see for himself but ‘it had cleared up, the moon shining very bright, and not a cloud to be seen; though, by what I could learn from the rest of the people who were on deck, it had been very cloudy about half an hour before, of course I easily divined what kind of phantom had so alarmed my messmate’.

A more respectable figure who did see the Flying Dutchman in Australian waters was no less a personage than Prince George of Wales, destined to be King George V. Sometime before dawn on 11 July 1881, while travelling through Bass Strait, the prince (or his brother travelling with him) recorded:

At 4 a.m. the Flying Dutchman crossed our bows. A strange red light as of a phantom ship all aglow, in the midst of which light the masts, spars and sails of a brig 200 yards distant stood out in strong relief as she came up on the port bow. The look-out man on the forecastle reported her as close as on the port bow, where also the officer of the watch from the bridge clearly saw her, as did also the quarterdeck midshipman, who was sent forward at once to the forecastle; but on arriving there was no vestige nor any sign whatever of any material ship was to be seen either near or right away to the horizon, the night being clear and the sea calm. Thirteen persons altogether saw her . . .

Just over six hours later, the sailor who had first reported seeing the Flying Dutchman fell to his death from the foretopmast and ‘was smashed to atoms’.

Another Australian connection with the Flying Dutchman comes from John Boyle O’Reilly, the famous Irish rebel. While being transported with his fellow Fenians to Western Australia in 1867, O’Reilly wrote a poem for the ship’s newspaper. The poem uses the Flying Dutchman tale to give expression to  O’Reilly’s forebodings at what was going to be a long exile from his homeland: 

They’ll never reach their destined port 

They’ll see their homes no more, 

They who see the Flying Dutchman 

Never, never reach the shore. 

Since then the legend has grown, gathering more detail and depth through endless accounts, books, films and artworks that feed from it. The Flying Dutchman soon fused with another piece of world folklore known as the ‘Wandering Jew’. This is said to be a man who refused to help Christ bear the burden of the cross as he struggled towards his crucifixion. In a bit of Old Testament revenge, the man was condemned to wander the Earth forever in eternal life. In the Flying Dutchman version, the captain of a Dutch merchantman attempting to enter Table Bay was frustrated by a change in the wind. The captain swore to be eternally damned if he did not enter the bay and that he would sail these waters until Judgement Day. He did not and he does. 

In another version it is said that the crew of the Dutch ship committed some atrocious crime and are condemned to never enter a port and must voyage onwards until their penance is done. This echoes a theme of Coleridge’s famous poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1797–98). A few years later the arch-romancer Walter Scott made the Flying Dutchman a pirate ship, in which guise the tale may be most familiar to modern audiences in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.[i]It’s not surprising that such a compelling legend is told again and again and that the cursed ship has been seen even in Australian waters.

[i] George Barrington, A Voyage to Botany Bay, with a description of the country, manners, customs, religion, &c. of the natives, sold by H.D. Symonds: London, 1795. 

Prince Albert Victor and Prince George of Wales, The Cruise of Her Majesty’s Ship ‘Bacchante’ 1879–1882. Compiled from the private journals, letters, and note-books of Prince Albert Victor and Prince George of Wales, with additions by J. D. Dalton, Vol. 1, Macmillan and Company: London, 1886, p. 551. 

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FRED THE RIPPER

April 8, 2024 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment
Frederick Deeming with a moustache drawn on the image in ink, Victoria Police Museum

Could he have been ‘Jack the Ripper? The remarkably evil life of Frederick Deeming is one of the most chilling stories of Australian, and global, crime. Even if he did not commit the Whitechapel murders of 1888, his known slayings make him one of the worst serial killers of the nineteenth century.

Beaten by his unstable father and imbued with fear of damnation by his God-obsessed mother, Frederick Bailey Deeming got off to a bad start in life almost as soon as he was born in Leicestershire, England in 1853. He was already known as ‘Mad Fred’ when he went to sea around the age of sixteen and soon became a cunning criminal. Fraud and false pretences were his favoured offences, though he also thieved from time to time.[i]

With an ability to turn on the charm and a persuasive way with words, the ruggedly handsome young sailor with blue eyes, fair hair and a ginger moustache had little trouble forming serious relationships with respectable women. In 1881 he married Marie James in England. By the middle of the next year he was in Sydney where he had jumped ship and started work as a plumber and gas fitter. By the time Marie arrived to join him he had already served a six-week sentence for stealing gas-burners. The couple would have four children over the next few years during which Deeming briefly ran his own plumbing business until he was declared bankrupt and serving two weeks for committing perjury. In January 1888 he turned up, alone, in Cape Town, South Africa where, using the alias Henry Lawson, he conducted several successful swindles.

Back in England in 1890, and still calling himself Henry Lawson, Deeming bigamously married Helen Matheson, using the proceeds of a fraud to pay for the wedding. Soon after, he had to quickly leave the country and escaped to Uruguay, South America. He was later arrested there, returned to England and given nine months in prison for fraud, though he  avoided any charge of bigamy.

After release in 1891, Deeming took another alias, Albert Williams, and rented a house in Rainhill, Lancashire. By this time, his deserted wife and children had tracked him down and Marie revealed her husband’s bigamy to Helen. Apparently too embarrassed at the social stigma this would bring upon her, Helen did not inform the authorities. Deeming, now fearing what else Marie night reveal about him, made an elaborate pretence of reconciliation and convinced her and the children to join him at Rainhill. It was a fatal error.

Shortly after the reconciliation ‘Williams’, now posing as an army officer, married for a third time. The unlucky woman was Emily Mather who, after the expensive wedding, sailed with her new husband to India where he said he had a posting. But Deeming changed the arrangements and the newlyweds went to Melbourne instead. Here they rented a house in Windsor. Always ostentatious, even if mostly with other peoples’ money, the outwardly charming ‘Druin’, as Deeming was now styling himself, soon became well known in the suburb. But in January 1892, he and his third wife disappeared.

Now, a chain of events began that would lead to Deeming’s eventual downfall. The next tenant in the Windsor house complained of a foul smell in the premises. A hearthstone in the bedroom was pulled up to reveal Emily’s badly decomposed remains. She had been beaten around the head and her throat slashed. In the house police also found a copy of the invitation to the wedding banquet of A O Williams and Helen. 

In a little over a week, the police tracked Deeming down to the Western Australian mining town of Southern Cross where he was calling himself Baron Swanston and posing as an engineer. After murdering Emily he had committed some further frauds and sailed to Sydney. There the apparently personable murderer soon convinced another young woman to become his fiancée. He then left for Western Australia, arranging with her to follow him when he was settled.

Deeming’s arrest ignited what would become a national and international press sensation. An English journalist used details from Australian sources to backtrack Deeming to his previous rented premises in Lancashire. The authorities there were prompted to investigate. Under the kitchen floor they found the bodies of Marie and the four children, all with their throats cut. The enormity of Deeming’s crimes was now apparent. 

The press certainly thought so and went into one of the regular ‘feeding frenzies’ that have become all too familiar since. A kind of mass public hysteria arose, known as ‘Deemania’. The accused  was called ‘a human tiger’ and his actions dubbed ‘the crime  of the century’. He would also be described, inaccurately, as ‘ape-like’ and a forensic expert would later claim that his skull was similar to that of a gorilla.[ii]

Although entitled to the presumption of innocence, Deeming was effectively tried and found guilty in the newspapers of the English-speaking world. He was tried for the murder of Emily under the name of ‘Williams’. His defence, which included Alfred Deakin, destined to be an early Australian Prime Minister, argued that the accused had been denied a fair trial, which was probably true. Deeming was almost certainly an epileptic, having suffered from fits for much of his life. He may also have been a schizophrenic fantasist who actually became the identities he invented as he committed his crimes. But after an unwise address to the jury from the dock and some unconvincing psychiatric testimony, he was quickly found guilty and sentenced to death. 

After being refused leave to appeal by the Privy Council, Edward Bailey Deeming, alias Albert Williams and at least four other pseudonyms, was hanged on 23 May 1892. Always a poser, he walked to the gallows smoking a cigar. His last words were reportedly ‘Lord, receive my spirit’. Outside the prison wall, twelve thousand people assembled to await the news that the monster was dead.

His death was celebrated in an English children’s street rhyme based on the then popular belief that Deeming was Jack the Ripper:

On the twenty-first of May,
Frederick Deeming passed away;
On the scaffold he did say —
“Ta-ra-da-boom-di-ay!”
“Ta-ra-da-boom-di-ay!”
This is a happy day,
An East End holiday,
The Ripper’s gone away.[iii]

Deeming was undoubtedly guilty of the horrendous murders of  his children and two wives, with the likely intent to kill another. But could he have been ‘Jack the Ripper?

In the overheated press speculations on the case, the fact that Deeming’s movements in 1888 were murky, together with the grisly nature of his crimes, led to speculation that he might have been the Whitechapel killer. Some credibility was attached to the claim when Deeming told fellow prisoners that he was the ripper and also expressed a murderous dislike of women. This was based on his venereal infection, probably of syphilis, contracted from a prostitute during his extensive travels. When directly questioned about this on the eve of his execution, deeming refused to confirm or deny the possibility.

But the theory has so many flaws that it is taken seriously by very few.[iv] A major problem is that Deeming’s murders bore little resemblance to the butchery of most of the Whitechapel victims. Nor were the women he killed prostitutes. Unlike the Whitechapel murderer, Deeming was not known to have taken trophies of his victims. Finally, wherever Deeming was during those bloody months of 1888 – probably South Africa – there is no evidence that he was anywhere near London, let alone the east end.

But there is no doubt that he slew Emily, the crime for which he eventually hanged, and that he also killed Marie and his children. He never confessed to any of these murders but while in prison during the lead up to his trial and as he awaited execution, Deeming wrote his autobiography, later destroyed, and poetry, which included the lines:

The Jury listened well to the yarn I had to tell, 

But they sent me straight to hell.

Deeming’s death mask

From Australia’s Most Infamous Criminals

[i] Barry O. Jones, ‘Deeming, Frederick Bailey (1853–1892)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/deeming-frederick-bailey-5940/text10127, published first in hardcopy 1981, accessed online 26 July 2022.

[ii] The Argus, 25 January 1930, p. 6.

[iii] Larry S Barbee, ‘Frederick Bailey Deeming’, Jack the Ripper Casebook, https://www.casebook.org/ripper_media/book_reviews/non-fiction/cjmorley/48.html, accessed July 2022.

[iv] Over fifty books have been written about Deeming, often revolving around the unlikely belief that he was Jack the Ripper. See Worldcat Identities, ‘Deeming, Frederick Bailey 1853-1892, https://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n2007021186/, accessed July 2022.